Dream Machine 2013: Back to the Future

Dream Machine 2013 pays homage to the PC's early days while being uncompromisingly cutting-edge at over $16,000

There’s an old saying that we stand on the shoulders of our predecessors, because without them, we wouldn’t be where we are today. Sure, sometimes you may want to throw the CPU out with the liquid-cooling water, and shrink everything into a proprietary PC shaped like a garbage can, but that pays absolutely no respect to our past.

Don't let the vintage look fool you. Though the DM's exterior is an homage to PCs of yesteryear, the interior is pure liquid-cooled, benchmark-busting badassery.

Rather than pretend to be with the cool kids in some chic, brushed-aluminum chassis, or lie our asses off that a 2-watt CPU/GPU is something to crow about, this year’s Dream Machine is an audacious tribute to all that has gone before it.

So, here’s to manually jumpering IRQs and clipping single sided floppies so you can use the other side. Here’s to ISA, VL-BUS,and PCI. Here’s to the glorious sound of a floppy head stepper motor, the shriek of a dot matrix printer, and the clunk of a buckling spring keyboard built with more metal than today’s laptops.

And here’s to beige. Oh, wonderful IBM beige, Compaq beige, Dell beige, and hell, even Apple beige. No two parts ever matched but no one cared.

To see videos of Maximum PC Editor Gordon Mah Ung walking you through each component, click on the image above!

Today, we embrace the beige and all that it stands for while celebrating the very best parts that modern computing has to offer. Continue reading to learn how we built this year's über rig!

Vintage Outside, Pure Kick-Ass Inside

The Dream Machine has always been about one thing and one thing only—absolutely ridiculous amounts of power, with not a single ounce of performance left on the editing room floor. If we left one PCIe slot or SATA port unused, it would be the equivalent of a hate crime against our readers.

Beige is back and badder than ever!

1. Four-Play

The only thing better than Titan SLI is four-way Titan SLI. These babies are so fast that we were able to crack into the Top 10 3DMark Hall of Fame, no problem.

2. Hybrid This Drive

We used four SSDs and three HDDs to achieve a voluminous 15TB of storage in Dream Machine 2013. So, for all who think the hard drive is dead: It ain’t.

3. Cool and Collected

With 17 fans and two massive radiators, the temps on the overclocked CPU and GPUs rarely ever moved. Hell, the temps were so low, we thought the utilities were reading them wrong.

4. Think of it as the 900B

The Corsair 900D looks like it offers excessive space—until you actually put all your hardware inside of it. Then it’s actually a pretty tight fit.

5. Absolute Power

Behind the radiator lies the LEPA G1600-MA PSU, among the most powerful single PSUs on the market and, believe it or not, we needed every single watt this sucker could produce to run this year’s Dream Machine.

Click the next page for a complete rundown of all the Dream Machine 2013's specs.

Comments

Maybe this was pointed out already, but Geekbox is now very defunct (or maybe this is privileged info that only ego owners are deemed worthy of being personally informed... 'course our silence is assured as, now that Geekbox is as lame and dead as Alienware, none of us [referring to owners of Geekbox systems] want to admit how badly we'd been suckered).
Actually, that isn't even true. Nobody from Geekbox thought it might be a good idea to inform their former customers (who laid down a CRAP load of money for something that took over 4 months - after everything was already paid for - to actually arrive) that we no longer had tech support, viable warranties, or any way to contact Geekbox's former support team or their former CEO, Adrian Hunter.
Don't get me wrong - - I love this computer. I'm using it right now. Admittedly, it's more than a little out-dated at this point, but aside from the total catastrophic failure(s) that took months (and even more money)to be fixed, it is well-built and pretty to look at.
And let's not forget the $200-something Geekbox charged me, roughly a week before they became xidax (whatever it's called) PCs, for some damn cardboard crate they insisted I had to have in order to ship my dead computer back to Utah (from Manhattan) to be revived. I've tried to get some kind of refund, but it's basically just beating a dead horse (or a fried motherboard).
And whoever said those logo decals were cheesy as hell for machine coming in at over 7 grand... well, I guess you don't always get what you pay for.

My only consolation is that I stayed the hell away from Alienware and their pervasive evil...

Lacks a sound card from any brand. No dedicated networking card with Infiniband, or even dual 10Gb. Uses onboard SSD controller. Is only a single-CPU board, restricting the number of PCIe lanes to below x16. Uses distilled water instead of refrigerant. Doesn't even have a TEC chiller in the cooling loop, let alone a two stage phase change system. Man, if I reviewed this the way MaximumPC reviews products, I'd give it a 5/10 and put it in the budget build category.

Oh, and you violated your own philosophy of looking backwards with new components by picking the original IBM M. Unicomp doesn't make "replicas," they make an upgraded version using buckling springs for the USB interface without all of the bulk. It's like if you went with a 486 for instead of just whatever the best Intel CPU manufactures. The point isn't to use the old tech, it's to reference it.

DM 2013 is frak'in awesome. If the USS Enterprise was being built as of this moment, DM 2013 should go into the starship and engage to warp 1. Might want to consider using plasma as a cooling agent though and or gel -like- the stuff in freezer paks.

Urrgg this thing is just too much, the power wont even be obsolete before the parts die on you after a long time. I rather get a PC where the hardware will be relevent untill it dies when it becomes unable to preform for the times applications.

The editors need to do a better job driving home the fact that some of the content put in the "latest articles" section of the home page is OLD content first published in the magazine. On the home page these reposted magazine articles have a small disclaimer that states "This article was taken from the ______ issue of Maximum PC magazine." but too many visitors to this website seem to miss that fact.

Why isn't a "This article was taken..." statement also listed by the article's title at the top of the linked paged. Clicking on the home page link takes you to the article's page but there is nothing at this new page that indicates it contains an OLD article first published in the magazine. Way too many readers on here, who probably don't read the magazine, are assuming every post on this site is just "newly written within the past day or so", not sometimes OLD recycled magazine material. Make the fact that OLD content is being displayed on here easier to spot.. would cut down dramatically on the "why didn't you all use the EVO?" type of comments that seem to permeate many of these OLD magazine reposts.

The article has a note about how it was taken from our September issue on the home page (before you click on the story), and it's the same size font as the regular text. :P (It's also highlited in italics as well)

In addition, when you get down to the part where we talk about the CPU choice, there is also a mention that the article was written before Ivy Bridge E came out. Finally, at the end of the article, there is also another reminder that the article was taken from the September issue.

Oh Jimmy.. I am feeling the love!! Thanks for responding to my, apparently, weak criticism.. or at least weak argument. I did make a cardinal sin before writing my comment.. I didn't read the article!! I already read it a few times in the magazine so didn't peruse it for any updates that may have added to it. If I had read the article, perhaps I wouldn't have written what I wrote. But I do still stand by my original argument that a little bit better job could be done to alert readers that this material is from the magazine, thus might be a few months old. I do applaud the efforts of the editors to update the material when needed to reflect any significant changes that might have taken place between the time the article was published in the magazine and on this site.

This article does do a good job of alerting readers it is a reposted article, but a few readers still made comments that, apparently, were written not knowing this fact. I did reviewed several past "magazine reposts" on here and they don't include an "end of article reminder", just the home page reminder. Perhaps more readers would not miss the "Note: This review was originally featured.." reminder if it was placed at the beginning AND end of each such article along with having the "reminder" listed on the home page. Doing this really will have all your bases covered.

Just a suggestion from the peanut gallery.. thanks for listening!! Perhaps I need my vision checked.. the italics makes the type look small to my 52 year old eyes!!

Written at 12:30am when I should be sleeping.. sorry for any incoherent thoughts.. ZZzzzzzzzzzz

Personally I would have went with 4 Samsung 840 EVO 1TB SSDs in RAID 0. 840 EVOs beat M500s hands down and in most benchmarks the 840 EVO either matches or beats the 840 Pros. There's a few situations where the 840 EVO is slightly below the 840 Pro but I doubt it would be very noticeable in real-world applications. By going half and half with the choice of SSDs, the total performance was negatively impacted. Depending on the applications, 2 arrays at 2x read/write performance would be optimal, but the current setup eliminates the possibility of 1 array at 4x read/write performance

It is noticeable, check out those disk busy times. The EVO takes half the time of the M500 to perform their huge storage test operations.

Hardware Info did a longevity test of TLC drives, they're just as reliable as MLC drives
http://us.hardware.info/reviews/4178/10/hardwareinfo-tests-lifespan-of-samsung-ssd-840-250gb-tlc-ssd-updated-with-final-conclusion-final-update-20-6-2013

I was just wondering about the use of SSD's in the RAID 0 setup. I haven't brushed up on new setup strategies for the latest SSD tech, but thought that there were issues with TRIM or similar functions with a RAID O SSD setup unless using certain newer Intel boards?

It's kind of a gray area. Traditionally Trim isn't supported in RAID, but some of the newer Intel boards do support it. Theoretically, the drives all have garbage collection built-in, so they should be fine without Trim. Either way, for this build it's one of those things where it only lives for a short period of time so maximum speed was our only concern, not longevity. That said, we are pretty confident SSDs in RAID 0 would be fine over time, but we have not tested it ourselves.

I had giggled more girly giggles than I care to admit when I received this issue. 4 Titans? Yes. 5GHz overclock? Oh yeah! 3 TERABTYTES IN SSDS? WHAT?! That's amazing! I gotta admit, the overclock and storage were my favorite parts of the build.

I feel like in around 5 years, I'll be looking back, thinking, "wow, I can't believe that I was excited about 1TB SSDs." :P

Any chance there will be a free raffle for the dream machine? I've been looking at a nice piece of desk real estate where the dream machine would comfortably fit. One can only hope. *sob* *gets a tissue*

Such dreams did come true for at least one person. The 1998 Dream Machine was given away via an online giveaway. Can view the details on pg 64 of the September 1998 magazine (or seen here.. maximumpc.com/article/features/old_school_monday_dream_machine_1998 ) Wonder what happened to that Dream Machine? I think all the others eventually got disassembled.. hence why the 2000 Dream Machine was pictured in a state of disrepair in the November 2000 issue, and why Nathan was able to find and reuse the empty HP Blackbird case used for 2008 Dream Machine.

Are the Dream Machines still signed? The 2000 Dream Machine had all the editor's signatures on a panel.. can view Gordon signing his John Hancock on DM2000 here.. books.google.com/books?id=5gEAAAAAMBAJ&pg=PT42&lpg=PT99 .. Josh's signature can also be seen!

Wow,nice find! In that issue you see advertising for the AMD thunderbird processor and that black Alienware case. I am using both of those components as I type, as my mule computer right now. STILL RUNNING lol I have the silver version of that case. And yeah they did have a dream machine giveaway that year :) I graduated highschool that year.. Man do I feel old now .. ;p

I know that "old" feeling very well.. my first son was three in 1998.. he just started college last month!! I really felt old when paying his tuition and room & board!!

In 1998 I was still using my Gateway 2000 486/33MHz that I paid $2200 during Christmas 1993. My wife and I debated for like a week on whether to get the 486 DX or SX version.. she is a scientist so thought it was wise to pay the $200 EXTRA for the DX. I also paid an extra $100 for the tower case (which I still have) and another $100 to upgrade from a 14 inch to a 15 inch monitor!! Another upgrade was getting the dual 5.25 & 3.5 inch TEAC floppy drive (also still have). I also paid extra for upgraded RAM but can't remember if it was for going from 4MB to 8MB, or 8MB to 16MB. And it shipped Windows 3.11 on floppies. The rig came without a CD-ROM or sound card.. spent like $600 the next year to get the Sound Blaster AWE 32, Altec Lansing clamshell speakers and a 2X CD-ROM. When I started downloading MP3s in 1999, found the 486/33 wasn't powerful enough to play them well.. used the ZIF socket to pop in a 486/100 DX4 which helped that problem. Motherboard gave up the ghost and magic puff of smoke in 2000 while putting an add-in card in. Started building my own machines after that starting with the Celeron 300A Slot One on a baby AT (so I could reuse my tower case)!!

IBM keyboards (and typewriters) were all being used in the US Government offices that I worked in as a clerk/typist in DC and Rockville, MD during my summer & winters vacations from college in the mid 1980s. Unfortunately, these keyboards still look funny to me to this day unless it has a WordPerfect 4.2 template above or around it's function keys!! I do remember one office I worked in having a word processing machine and green monitor (not a computer, just a word processor) made by EXXON!!

As for being "built like tanks", all early computing equipment was build that way. I especially remember the early IBM desktop cases weighing a ton!! Around 1990 the company I worked at was throwing away an empty IBM XT case so I took it, thinking I would rebuild it. But 1990 wasn't the same for a home builder/DIYer as 2000 would be when I built my first rig, and I never did anything with the case so eventually threw it away. :-(